This blog - I'm Wes Rehberg - is dedicated to what I'm up to in art, writing, running, activism, and critical thinking...

Friday, June 06, 2014

BRIEF THOUGHTS ON ART AND DESIGN

BRIEF THOUGHTS ON ART AND DESIGN: From a time with film and
photographic art, to now with work in painting and
drawing again – on the edges, if there is an edge - I like to think about two things –
enframing and mystery. Design itself, so long in dominance in the arts, doesn’t do it
for me, in itself or for itself, no matter how wondrous the technique, unless what’s going on
in a work takes me outside the frame.

DERRIDA VS GOTTLIEB: I’m drawing on Jacque Derrida’s
notion of “enframing,” which in a painting is the thing within it that takes one
out of the boundaries of the physical work and resets the frame (or disappears it).
Mystery, an intangible, is something personal, and maybe I’ll try to explore
what I mean by that sometime, but one thing I can say is that it’s part of what
makes the frame disappear and brings about an internal vista.

I recall in the ‘60s looking at Adolph Gottlieb’s work at
MOMA wondering when the mystery and that which would move me within the work
would happen – even with perhaps understanding the notion of the alchemist in
his work – Barnett Newman too. The lot of them: Rothko, Motherwell, Kline but
not Diebenkorn and his versatility of approaches to a “subject.”

THE BLAUE REITER: Just to briefly sum up what I think I’m
getting at, I think Kandinsky, Marc and others from this movement have a closer
affinity to capturing the re-enframing and mystery I feel I want to see in a
work that uses design as a key element and focus.This is only sketchily developed, obviously ...

I’m not thinking about some of the extremes Francisco Goya went to in his paintings, but I think the so-called fine art of painting and drawing needs to open more spaces to address the impact of social and human rights issues ...I feel so passionate about this. I don’t know where that
passion is coming from but it doesn’t matter; what matters is that it be
expressed.

As a footnote – my youngest daughter is an extremely
knowledgeable published art historian Ph.D. who also runs an MFA program in The
Netherlands and so I write this understanding that that intelligence might
descend on this and have a response that would open my eyes wider. But for now,
this is it.

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About Me

I'm a writer, runner, artist, social justice activist; retired as a United Methodist pastor, filmmaker and print journalist. I've got a Ph.D. in philosophy, interpretation and culture from SUNY-Binghamton. I've also been part of or guided social justice delegations to Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, Chiapas and central Mexico and the Mideast. Much of this work is with Eileen, my creative spouse and partner.. With regard to running, I am a former All-American in track, my best race a 3rd place medal in the 1961 National AAU Championship 600 race at Madison Square Garden in NYC. You may follow me at wildclearing.blogspot.com, at @WesRehberg on Twitter, and on Facebook.